Fleshing out a concept. Tell me what you think. Perhaps someone would care to assist in its development? Click the following link. Below is some backstory.

REBOOT AMERICA

Many argue we need a new operating system (OS) – that our “Windows”-based Constitution isn’t running well enough. “Let’s install Linux”, they say. Perhaps a Linux-based Constitution would indeed run better, but this is not the root of our problem. I would in fact argue we are already running a rock-solid OS like Linux. The problem is that no matter the OS, if the application load is too high and the applications themselves poorly written, the OS will inevitably slow and then crash.

We’re nearing that crash.

Then what do we do? I suggest loading a clean operating system into a clean computer – load a clean Constitution into a clean America – reboot America.

The government will do “whatever it takes” to revive the economy, Obama said. That means “we shouldn’t worry about the deficit next year or even the year after,” he said, adding that in the short term, “the most important thing is that we avoid a deepening recession.”

“Whatever it takes”? “Whatever“? Biggest lie of the millennium right there, folks. (Biggest lie of the previous millennium? Satan convincing people he/it doesn’t exist.)

Here’s one thing the government will not do, which perhaps ironically is the one thing that will save the U.S. economy long-term: reduce its size dramatically.

Just to balance the standing budget, we’d need to lop 15% off the top. That’s 15% from EACH and EVERY department. Add the questionable financial “bailout” package and that figure rises to 43%. JUST TO BALANCE THE BUDGET.

Imagine if you were 43% in the hole next year. How long would you last?

This doesn’t even address the $11 TRILLION public debt we have amassed. That’s $37,000 for every American. Not every household or taxpayer, every American.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have that right now. In fact, my retirement assets have declined recently more than that figure, so how about we’re now square, okay government? Seems only equitable, seeing as your fiscal policies fueled my losses. Want my $37,000? I’m referring you to Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd.

Oh, I almost forgot the unfunded entitlements, i.e. Social inSecurity and MediScare. Some estimates place those around $50 trillion. That’s another $170,000 on top of the $37,000 you owe. You can get yourself a pretty nice house in some parts for $207,000. That’s what the Congress has either already spent or has promised to spend on behalf of each and every last one of us.

Back to this notion that the government will do “whatever it takes” to ensure a healthy economy, having the alcoholic design his recovery plan is a solution doomed to failure.

Obama won, yes, but only because McCain lost this election. I won’t address the tactics the Obama campaign utilized to win, as they have been documented elsewhere. I am focusing on McCain.

Firstly, it must be said up-front that Palin was a net gain to McCain. I have heard rumblings from Republican elitists and operatives that Palin ruined McCain’s chances. No, McCain did that. Palin roused the base and, looking at the numbers, people who indicated Palin influenced their votes positively outweigh those who indicated the negative. So, end of that discussion. Really. If you persist, you are operating beyond facts and need to look at your bias.

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Background: My account on the social networking website, facebook, was disabled this past Monday, without notice. Here is a brief conversation which details the event.

Friend: S**z told me you got booted from Facebook for being an Obama fan, but have been reinstated. What is the deal with that? Are they discriminating against people?

Should I not be associating with you for fear of being kicked?

Me: Yeah – they told me to like totally cease and desist from my love fest for the O man.

What transpired was I attempted to log in to fb Monday afternoon and found the acct was disabled. I sent them a short email. Static for 3 days.

In the interim, perhaps 3 or 4 people besides myself wrote fb and read them the riot act re: free speech, tolerance of views not your own, etc. My wife went so far as to say they needed to apologize to me.

Me? I’ve been distracted with work stuff, so I didn’t get as upset as I might otherwise.

In the end, I received an email yesterday stating the acct was disabled “in error” and they did apologize for the inconvenience. I would have liked an explanation, but hey, these are their bytes. I grok this.

My guess is someone – one of my more Barack-loving friends – wrote fb and said I was a threat to the future of Fabian socialism. A fb employee reviewed it and, being the young skull full of mush he/she is, disabled my acct. This would have be the “error”.

It was kind of eerie. One flip of a bit and I was gone. My wife’s profile said “married”, but not to me. My posts on others’ profiles were gone, as were their links to my pics, notes, links, videos, et al. My presence in my family’s photos was eliminated. This is the future – where your digital existence can be erased in a New York minute by a pimple-faced ne’er-do-well with an axe to grind.

Welcome to 1984.

a

See the video here. What a rare song – that is timeless and historic at the same time – AND makes it to the top of the charts. Woe that more people understood the message!

Look into my eyes, what do you see?
Cult of personality
I know your anger, I know your dreams
Ive been everything you want to be
Im the cult of personality
Like mussolini and kennedy
Im the cult of personality
Cult of personality
Cult of personality

Neon lights, a nobel prize
The mirror speaks, the reflection lies
You dont have to follow me
Only you can set me free
I sell the things you need to be
Im the smiling face on your t.v.
Im the cult of personality
I exploit you still you love me

I tell you one and one makes three
Im the cult of personality
Like joseph stalin and gandi
Im the cult of personality
Cult of personality
Cult of personality

Neon lights a nobel prize
A leader speaks, that leader dies
You dont have to follow me
Only you can set you free

You gave me fortune
You gave me fame
You me power in your gods name
Im every person you need to be
Im the cult of personality
Look into my eyes, what do you see?
Cult of personality
I know your anger, I know your dreams
Ive been everything you want to be
Im the cult of personality
Like mussolini and kennedy
Im the cult of personality
Cult of personality
Cult of personality

Neon lights, a nobel prize
The mirror speaks, the reflection lies
You dont have to follow me
Only you can set me free
I sell the things you need to be
Im the smiling face on your t.v.
Im the cult of personality
I exploit you still you love me

I tell you one and one makes three
Im the cult of personality
Like joseph stalin and gandi
Im the cult of personality
Cult of personality
Cult of personality

Neon lights a nobel prize
A leader speaks, that leader dies
You dont have to follow me
Only you can set you free

You gave me fortune
You gave me fame
You me power in your gods name
Im every person you need to be
Im the cult of personality

(note: posted originally on my blog at TIFI.net)

A friend notified me today that she had received an interesting piece of mail which purports to be from the North Carolina Democratic Party. It is a standard postcard, the front of which looks like a standard Obama-Biden campaign message. At the bottom of the front is the Web address NC.BARACKOBAMA.COM.

The back of the card is far more interesting. The bottom-right of the card indicates:

PAID FOR BY CAMPAIGN FOR CHANGE, A PROJECT OF THE NORTH CAROLINA DEMOCRATIC PARTY (WWW.NCDP.ORG) AND NOT AUTHORIZED BY ANY CANDIDATE OR CANDIDATE’S COMMITTEE.

The bottom-left reads:

Join us and learn more. Visit NC.BARACKOBAMA.COM. E-mail NC@BARACKOBAMA.COM. Text NC to OBAMA (62262).

Most interestingly, the handwritten message on the left reads:

INformation MissiNg

from your RegistratioN

form. You need to vote

Early at-one stop early

voting-Oct.16th-Nov.1st

Call 1-888-NC-Early,

for Voting Location

Thank you.

My friend avers that she and her husband (to whom the card was addressed) have been registered to vote for eight years in North Carolina. She called the NC state voter registration offices and was assured there was nothing wrong with her husband’s registration. So why the cautionary statement about his registration and the insistance that this necessitates early voting? I considered several possibilities; here are the two I cannot completely dismiss:

• This is an authentic mailer. There is nothing wrong with the registration. This is in fact an outright prevarication, the goal of which is to frighten the recipient into voting early.

• This is an authentic mailer. The message was generated because someone pretending to be the recipient registered to vote.

I think the first possibility is most probable.

I checked both the NCDP.ORG and NC.BARACKOBAMA.COM sites and both mention boldly that early voting has begun in NC. Neither mention anything about this mailer.

It appears an agent of the NCDP resorted to lying to a voter about his registration in order to elicit an early vote for Obama. Is this not criminal activity? Is it prosecutable?

Anyone able to correlate this with other “interesting” election abnormalities?

As I wrote yesterday, the Obama campaign has been using some pretty creepy artwork to promote its candidate. A couple of comments asked for details on the links between OBEY and Shepard Fairey and the Obama campaign. See the two comments I left on that post. One contains links to images, some on the Obama site itself. The other contains text available up on the OBEY site, where Obama has personally thanked Fairey and the campaign commissioned further work.

I was impressed, as many have been, with the artistry of the Obama campaign posters. Yet, apart from the overall artistry, something bothers me about the theme: the strong monochromes, the use of a single over-hyped word with little real meaning, Obama looking off in the distance like – like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Che. These posters seem so familiar.

They look an awful lot like the posters of the socialist and communist authoritarian governments of the last century. Retro cool, right?

Images convey meaning and the fact Obama’s campaign uses these images so prominently should not go unanalyzed.

So I looked into the creator of these posters, an artist named Shepard Fairey. His company is called, I kid you not, OBEY. Check out the website: http://obeygiant.com/

As I poked around, the artwork and ideas behind them reminded me so much of my angst-ladened college days in the late 80s and early 90s. That’s when it hit me – the whole Obama campaign has that feel… like a college road-show of the disaffected and angst-ladened. It’s easy to spout-off anything against “the man” and have it go unchecked, for you’re surrounded by similarly underproductive slackers who’ve seldom if ever worked in the real world. And yet, to listen to their words, they paradoxically know so very much about that world.

They have their dream ticket in Senators Obama and Biden, both of which have spent their entire adult lives in either college or elected office. Biden worked in the private sector for 3 years – 40 years ago. Obama has either been in college, teaching college, or running for office.

The newsmedia come across much like college newspaper that questions everything but itself and its editorial staff’s friends.

It’s perhaps ironic that Obama’s term would be the same length as the average undergraduate degree. I suppose if we really don’t do well in school, we’ll be on the eight-year plan.

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio waxes maudlin in a recent Internet video:

“‘If you’re not going to vote I don’t even know what to say to you anymore,’ DiCaprio says after the video turns serious. ‘You know you have to vote.’”

I argue you have the duty NOT to vote if you are not well-informed of the salient issues before us. That the issues one understands are substantially important is just as critical as is the breadth of issues one understands.

The vast majority of people who will vote for Barack Obama in a month are misinformed or uninformed as to anything that matters today or will matter tomorrow – or a thousand years from now.

Of the few American Liberal ideologues who know history, they believe the future does not have to be grounded in the lessons of the past. Thus, they do not teach the past, except where it supports their view of the future. The non-ideological followers (perhaps 50-75% of Obama supporters) do not seriously investigate the claims of the ideologues. Thus our present circumstance.

Thus, President Obama.

If you are well-informed, having investigated objectively at least 2 sides of a myriad of issues, you do have a duty to vote. Otherwise, you have a civic duty not to vote.

Originally posted 10/2/2008 on OpEds.com.

I want to vote for a black man. I would love to vote for a woman for that matter. Or a Jew. Or a paraplegic. In fact, I’d really like to vote for a wheelchair-bound Jewish black woman. That would pretty much forever eliminate this ridiculous argument that America, as a whole, discriminates on the basis of skin color, sex, religion, or physical abilities.

I want to vote for a black man – just not the black man Barack Obama. He does not share my values – values which guide my decisions. He does not share my respect of history – respect which helps illuminate the future. He does not share my line of reasoning – reasoning which… which gets this word… “reason”, and places the head above the heart in serious matters of public policy.

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